China, India will never be apart: India’s envoy

Beijing, June 6 (IANS) India and China will work out their differences to ensure the two countries continue to progress and prosper together, India’s envoy Gautam Bambawale said ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bilateral meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Summit (SCO) this week.

In an interview to the state-controlled China Central Television (CCTV), Bambawale said India and China will not “be apart” from each other on the path of development.

Modi will attend the SCO summit in the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao on June 9-10 and will have a one-on-one meet with Xi, over a month after his ice-breaking meeting with China’s President in Wuhan.

Bambawale described the Wuhan meet as a “strategic communication” between the leaders.

“I think the informal Wuhan summit between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi was an effort by the leaders of two large countries in the world, India and China, to talk to each other, to promote cooperation between the two countries,” Bambawale said.

“Most importantly, it was a strategic communication between the leaders of the two countries. As a result of their discussion in Wuhan, the two leaders have arrived at a certain consensus: the first and most important consensus is India and China are partners in progress and economic development: the second most important consensus is that there are many more commonalities between India and China than differences,” he added.

“We will work on these commonalities. Of course, there are certain differences between us, but we will also work at the differences to ensure the two countries continue to progress and prosper together.

“We are not going to be going away from each other or apart from each other. We are going to do this together.”

Sino-Indian ties were hit hard last year during and after an over two-month military stand-off near their borders with Bhutan.

The relations have been on an upswing since December.

Talking about the SCO, an eight-member security bloc which formally included India and Pakistan last year, the envoy said he was confident that China will hold the summit successfully.

He said the spirit of the Shanghai Cooperation Summit stands for “multipolarity”.

“And we believe that the message which will come out of the Qingdao summit is that important big countries which are members of the Shanghai Cooperation (Organisation) can peacefully coexist despite differences in their systems and that they can work together.

“I think one of the others important points which will come out is unilateralism is not necessary in today’s world. Multilateralism and learning to live together is the important message, which will come from Qingdao.”